


Breaths Like Waves On A Glass Beach

by nic_takes_Ls (nic_L)



Series: The Symphony Is Dead & Why You Still Hear It [1]
Category: DreamSMP (Video Blogging RPF), Minecraft (Video Game), Video Blogging RPF
Genre: (is it suicidal idealization if you;re a ghost?), (so spoilers!!), Angst, Canonical Character Death, Dead Characters, Dead Jschlatt, Dead Wilbur Soot, Gen, Like that's kinda it ig, Long-Haired Wilbur Soot, Panic Attacks, Ponytailbur, Post Disc-War Finale, Scratching, Self-Hatred, Smoking, Tommy's and Tubbo's Conversation With Alive/Deadbur, Very Minor Self-Harm, WOO SEASON THREE AND MY FAVE SHOULD BE BACKKKKKKK MMMM, Wilbur Soot-centric, lmaoo, suicidal idealization
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-21
Updated: 2021-01-21
Packaged: 2021-03-13 03:33:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,241
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28896702
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nic_L/pseuds/nic_takes_Ls
Summary: “Guys- What have you done? What the- FUCK have you done?” He shouts at nothing and everything, at his brothers and himself.Wilbur heaves, wraps his arms around himself, shudders.“All- All I wanted was to stay fucking dead!”
Relationships: Jschlatt & Wilbur Soot, Tubbo & Tommyinnit, Wilbur Soot & Bad Mental Health, Wilbur Soot & TommyInnit, Wilbur Soot & Tubbo
Series: The Symphony Is Dead & Why You Still Hear It [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2169111
Comments: 24
Kudos: 259





	Breaths Like Waves On A Glass Beach

**Author's Note:**

> i fucking uh speedran this and had an actual good emotional motif/semi-plot and then i went to go eat and forgot all that so you get this instead

The darkness seems to ripple, impossibly, in Wilbur’s eyes, somehow moving through a million shades of void-black. 

“Guys- What have you _done_ ? What the- FUCK have you done?” He shouts at nothing and everything, at his brothers and himself.  
  
  
Wilbur heaves, wraps his arms ~~(that he can’t even _SEE_ in this nothing) ~~ around himself, shudders.  
  
  
“All- All I wanted was to stay f _uck_ ing dead!”  
  
  
He closes his eyes and the ambient melody of Mellohi fades out, along with the distant sounding voices of Tommy and Tubbo. They don’t say goodbye, he doesn’t expect one. 

It’s not like he can see anything, in this hollow of space and time and shadows and-  
  
  
He opens his eyes.  
  
  
Once again, it’s the endless expanse of sky, he’s come to know as the afterlife. The shade of blue it is varies with whatever time of day it’s supposed to be mimicking, without cloud and without sun or moon to rule it.  
  
  
There’s no ground to speak of, just a smooth plane not even visible.  
  
  
It’s sky, but Wilbur thinks that the lighter shades it turns look like the pieces of seaglass he’d find occasionally on the beach he’d swum in as a kid. A smooth blue or green shade just on the right part of opaque to cast a dark shadow, wave-smoothed and when split or shattered, sharp and glistening with a deadly edge. (He’d had an obsession with the idea of a glass beach, a shore entirely made of shades of sea-tossed glass, kickstarting his geography interest as he’d been given a map of one and causing his subsequential poring over hundreds of maps and geography terms. He’d never gotten to see one.)  
  
  
The sky doesn’t look as much like a shade of seaglass at the moment Wilbur opens his eyes, instead a deep black-blue as finds himself out of that distant dark place and kneeling, hands shaking and splayed before him in fists. There’s a darker figure indicating Schlatt in his peripheral vision, but Wilbur only gasps for breath and tugs his trenchcoat lapels tight to his chest.  
  
  
“Dream’s alive. He’s alive, alive when he could’ve been _dead_ \- because of _me_ .”  
  
  
His chest rattles with his gaping heaves, and his reaches a hand to his temple, pulls on his hair and letting it hurt with a searing pain.  
  
  
“Because of me.” 

  
  
When he had first blinked and found himself in the dark, suddenly separated from Schlatt’s side and the sky and heard the trickling of a distant conversation, Wilbur had stayed very still and did not move. 

There was- There was Tommy’s voice, and something about Dream being gone, and discs and nearly incoherently happy sobs, and Wilbur had thought the world decided to be kind to him just once and let him hear Tubbo’s half-hysterical exclamations, his laughter.  
  
  
In the ~~nothing~~ ~~empty~~ ~~afterlife~~ sky there was a spot where if Wilbur looked at too long, if he ran his hand through the air there, he could see a glimpse of Tommy, prominent eyebags and scruffy hair, and it would be heavier or fainter as the days went by.  
  
  
He wouldn’t sleep ~~(not like he needed to, but he still never did)~~ and would watch the air stay impossibly the same while Schlatt snored feet away.  
  
  
It was darker in the hours before Wilbur had watched it fade with an almost dazzling ripple, and now Wilbur knew why. 

  
  
And he was proud, and he had whispered to himself the words and then by the sudden cut-off of a sentence, had discovered he could talk to them.  
  
  
  
Talking to Tommy and Tubbo made Wilbur feel dizzy, voices that he’d replayed in his head now a little rougher, a little deeper, but soothing and a balm on his ragged soul.  
  
  
And then Tommy told him that Dream was in a prison. That he could be brought back. That Dream was alive and not dead and still breathing and _alive_ because the bastard knew how to bring _him_ back.  
  
  
Vitriolic, he had spat how he’s only wanted to stay dead, and he doesn’t know if that was a lie. He doesn’t know. Wilbur did want to die, he’s sure, and then Tommy had sounded- wrong, in his voice, talking to Wilbur and that does make Wilbur only want ever more to be.  
  
  
Tommy sounded scared, and Tubbo silent.  
  
  
Mellohi sang, melodic and chilling, and wrong.  
  
  
The darkness had begun swirling and that’s when his chest fragmented and he’d slammed his fists into his thighs and when his breaths came rushing in and lungs felt as though they were waves on a glass beach, laving over sharp edges and splitting in twos and threes and splinters. 

Tommy had asked Tubbo if they did the right thing.  
  
  
As if that was even a question, as if Wilbur deserves to live, as if he had ever deserved to live-  
  
  
And then the dark faded and now he’s still here in a faux nighttime sky, still kneeling,  
  
  
And every time he chokes for air (he still needs it, of all things, somehow he needs to breathe in this fucked up mess of an ~~underworld~~ overworld) it still feels like glass in his throat, and Wilbur shakes with it.  
  
  
“I don’t- I can’t- I’m not who they want and they know it and they’re going to let the only other person who should be dead live and-”  
  
  
Wilbur runs a hand through his ponytail, catching in the ever-untangled knots and the other down his arm, nails digging in and bringing the cold, the numb away from his limbs.  
  
  
“I only wanted to be dead, I only wanted to be dead,” He chants to himself, a mantra, a song, something to convince himself this is true.  
  
  
He chokes on air and glass and the lump in his throat and smashes one fist into the ground, knuckles striking the invisible floor he kneels on and blazing in pain after. He raises his hand to do it again.  
  
  
“Hey, knock it off.” A hand wraps around his wrist and Wilbur startles, yanks his arm to his chest.  
  
  
Schlatt is standing over him, cigarette in his other hand and a bitter-turned mouth on his face.  
  
  
“Schlatt- They- I was-” Wilbur doesn’t even know why he’s trying to talk to Schlatt, let alone try to tell him about what Wilbur can’t even process right now.  
  
  
“Don’t care.” The ram-horned man shrugs and fiddles in his suit pocket. “Want a cigarette?”  
  
  
Wilbur flicks his gaze down to the small stick of ash and dust and smoke in Schlatt’s outstretched hand and back up to where Schlatt has his own between his lips.  
  
  
“Eh, nevermind, you can’t breathe properly enough to use it at the moment.” The cigarette is gone just as soon as it appeared, and it’s true, Wilbur’s still gasping and shivers still claw down his spine.  
  
  
He shifts his legs forwards, pressed to his chest and wraps an arm around them, the other hand gripping the edge of his coat.

  
  
A wave of self-hatred and self-doubt and yet a flicker of resentful hope washes over his glass-torn heart and Wilbur wheezes before wiping a hand over his face.  
  
  
“Don’t get comfortable here,” His voice comes out ragged, hollow with a terribly wrong smile on his face.  
  
  
Schlatt flits his gaze up to Wilbur’s eyes.  
  
  
  
“Why.”  
  
  
Wilbur laughs.  
  
  
He laughs and his breaths come in cold and rushing like waves on a glass beach.  
  
  



End file.
